Start Spreading the News
by OceanPenguin
Summary: Ladybug's allergic to cats. Chat Noir has cat dandruff in his hair. What's a girl to do?


A/N: Seriously, me and allergies, it's a thing. Also, senioritis? That's a thing, too. I swear, I have no idea how I've kept it together after that acceptance letter in December. Gah. Anyways, I hope you enjoy.

Title from Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."

* * *

The thing is, Marinette knows she's allergic to cats; she found out long before she steps into Alya's house for the first time and her eyes water and her nose begins to twitch. Marinette doesn't tell Alya, though; she really likes the cat in the corner and besides, allergies go away as you age, right? So she simply plumps to her knees and drags her hand through fluffy white fur. Snowball mewls in pleasure as Marinette scritches the little divots behind the ears.

Her nose begins to run, and Marinette reluctantly pulls away from the cat to snag a tissue and stem the oncoming flood. She quickly dabs her eyes and excuses herself with a cold when Alya catches her surrounded in a veritable mountain of tissue.

Marinette pays for it later. Her arms and hands are red with an itchy red rash that just doesn't go away, and she goes through nearly a half box of Kleenex afterwards. But she'd do it again in a heartbeat. Cats were just so fun, and her parents, after discovering her severe allergy to cats, had kept her away from them at a young age.

So as far as first encounters with felines went, it was a good one.

* * *

She does try to avoid cat dandruff as much as possible, however – the resulting cold-like symptoms just aren't worth dealing with on a daily basis. But if she ever gets an invitation to pet a cat, well, that's what Allegra is for. And what the destiny of pack of tissues and the plastic baggie she carries with her everywhere is.

So she thinks that she can be excused for warily shrinking back when Chat Noir comes onto the scene. As Ladybug, she already exhibits a few unfortunate insect traits; she suspects that Chat Noir may actually have cat dandruff in that ridiculously bouncy hair of his.

He bounds up to her with a great big smile. He's such a puppy, a little Golden Retriever, and when he sticks out his hand in introduction he tosses his head back and achoo! Marinette's scrambling for her tissues and her Allegra and trying to stop the flood from her nose.

"Sorry, sorry," she apologizes. She cleans her hands with a hand sanitizer, and then offers it to Chat. "I have a cold, it's really inconvenient." He takes the little bottle and then sterilizes the germs on his own gloves. "I'm Ladybug."

He takes it. The half-dried alcoholic solution leaves a tacky film on the suit material, and she feels the ridges and bumps of his palms pressed against her own. He has a firm handshake; she appreciates that in a partner, because what else can he be? His green sclera and a detachable tail mark him as another Miraculous user.

"Chat Noir. No worries," he tells her. "It's flu season."

"Isn't it always?" She cracks a small smile. "For me, at least." Marinette turns away and sneezes violently again. Being next to Chat was definitely not helping, no matter how charming he was.

"Let's go tackle that akuma." He points into the distance. "Why don't you go ahead? You're using a yo-yo, and I'd really like to not slam into you by accident."

She snorts. Bad decision; now there was a lump of something slimy working its way down her throat. "Mmhmm," she hums, because she really doesn't want to open her mouth now.

Marinette makes sure to maintain a distance from Chat, far enough that the wind can't blow the dander into her eyes and close enough that she doesn't lose sight of the boy. He's new, she knows that much; he's new and very much inexperienced. He does seem to have a firm grasp on his baton, though, almost as if he took regular fencing classes. Or maybe he just practiced extensively at night, but something about his behavior whispered that wasn't quite it.

He's keeping up with her just fine when they reach the akuma's hiding place. The oversized bird screeches in annoyance, fluttering its azure feathers before singing an atrociously ear-grating song that echoes loudly in the brass church bell. Marinette nearly drops her yo-yo from the pain, only remembering not to by sheer force of habit. Chat, on the other hand, has to fish his metal stick of death from between a gargoyle's ears.

The akuma, sensing weakness, hops closer to Chat. Its song increases in volume and Chat's face screws up in pain. He leans back, baton held in a perfect fencing grip ready to whack the bird of paradise into another dimension when he loses his balance and topples forward.

Marinette swings her yo-yo out and captures him just in time. He doesn't splatter to his death, but it's not a clean, even break either.

The akuma had been trilling smugly when it saw Chat's mistake. However, just as it attempted to slide the ring off of Chat's finger, Chat's forward fall knocked the akuma's nose into Chat's blond hair.

 _Achoo!_

The akuma sneezed violently. It jumped a bit in the air, and then landed with a firm thump on Chat's metal-toed boots. With the slippery material so unsuited for bird talons, the akuma had no choice but to anchor itself with a beak in Chat's hair.

 _ACHOO! ACHOO!_

The bird propels itself backward a few feet from the force of its sneezing, and were it not for Chat's remarkably quick reflexes, it would have become minced meat on the streets of Paris.

The akuma struggles frantically, wriggling and flapping in Chat's grasp. The familiar purple mask appears over its eyes as Hawkmoth begins to instruct its creation; however, when the akuma's nose begins to twitch in the beginnings of another sneeze, Marinette darts forward and crushes the little jeweled amulet hanging from the creature's neck.

In the aftermath, a confused stick-like man sneezes incessantly. "Sorry," he gasps, "I don't know what came over me. I just – " _ACHOO!_ "– can't stop–" _ACHOO!_ " – sneezing."

Marinette pats him consolingly on the back and hands him her pack of tissues. "Bless you," she tells him, and leaps away so she can suffer her oncoming sneeze attack in peace. She does give Chat another dollop of hand sanitizer before she leaves, though, just so he doesn't get sick. What type of partner would she be if she let her partner come down with a flu the first day on the job?

Also, she really doesn't need him to realize that she's allergic to his hair. If she couldn't take the puns today, then she certainly wouldn't live through the barrage of teasing that is sure to come her way if he ever found out. Besides, she doesn't want him to feel bad about making her sneeze.

By some stroke of luck, it turns out that every other akuma Hawkmoth chooses to create is allergic to cat dandruff as well. Maybe Hawkmoth himself is allergic to cats. Either way, it makes battles much simpler. All Marinette has to do is lock the akuma and Chat into a closet, have the akuma fall face first into Chat's mass of hair and sneeze away, while Chat breaks the amulet and Marinette purifies the butterfly. Sadly, closets seems to be in low supply in the public streets (unless one counts water closets, and she isn't about to terrify women and their makeup), so most of the time, battles go on the way they do before Chat came on the scene. But once in a while, when some unfortunate akuma soul happens to get just a bit too close to her partner's hair, a sneezing fit would begin and the fight would finish in the next minute or so.

Marinette would then hand the akuma victim a pack of tissue (she alternated between ladybug and black cat ones) and fly off, because she would inevitably have a sneezing fit as well.

Having Chat around definitely makes her fights easier. They're also more fun, and so she views being Ladybug as less of a burden. And until the day Chat finds out that she's allergic to cats, Ladybug finds herself enjoying Chat's puns.

* * *

Akuma fights used to be twice a month on average, but after Chat Noir came onto the scene, they begin increasing in frequency to four or five times a month. It's highly suspicious to be constantly sick and yet being energetic at the same time, so naturally, Marinette can't fake having a cold every time she and Chat meet. But she doesn't always have the time to take her pills before akumas strike either, so she suffers through those fights with a constant runny nose.

It gets to the point where even Chat begins to notice patterns – and this is the boy who didn't notice that her hair changed from pigtails to a ponytail until five fights later.

"Are you alright? You've been getting sick every two months or so," he says the next time they were in the middle of a fight. "I would've guessed you were a werewolf, but werewolves are monthly, so."

"Just a really bad immune system," she answers. "You have no idea."

"Are you sure?" he asks, skeptical.

"I'll be fine, seriously," she reassures him. "It's just a passing cold."

There's a pause, almost as if he's going to say something else, but he drops the topic. He tells her instead, "Hope you feel better soon," before sending the current akuma – a Ladybug look-a-like – in to a sneezing fit.

The actual Ladybug darts in and crushes the akuma's jeweled ring. "Thanks," she says absently, and then forgets to take her meds the next time there's a fight.

* * *

There's a new boy in her multivariable calculus class. She sneezes unrelentingly when she's near him on the first day, so after a seat request change and a hastily-swallowed Allegra pill later, her little trash bag of tissues finally stops growing. He probably has a cat at home.

His name is Adrien, and he gets a funny look in his eyes when she wipes her nose incessantly.

"Here," he slides her when they're grouped together for a project. It's a ladybug tissue pack – she snorts before she realizes that it's an inside joke only Chat and Ladybug know – and thanks him instead.

"Allergies," she tells him, gesturing at her nose. "They're a thing. I'm not contagious, I swear."

"I know. I've got a friend with really bad allergies, too."

* * *

"Hey," Chat drops down next to her. He hands her a black cat tissue pack. "I've noticed that your cold hasn't gotten any better."

Marinette sneezes messily. "No, it hasn't." Truth be told, it wasn't that she had forgotten to take her meds, it was more along the lines of forgetting to refill her medicine. So without her Allegra, she was gearing up for a long and painfully annoying battle.

"Thanks for the tissues."

"No problem. Think you can do this?" He jerks a thumb behind him. "This one's so easy, I bet I can take it out by myself. All you'll have to do is purify the butterfly when I bring it to you on a golden platter."

She snorts. "What type of partner would I be if I let you handle it all alone?" Marinette pushes herself to her feet and stows the tissues away in a convenient suit pocket. "I'll be fine."

He tilts his head, mouth quirked down.

"Fine. Go ahead of me; I'll be doing long distance," she sighs.

Chat's lips curve up. "Good. Get some rest, milady. That akuma'll be gone before you know it."

The akuma fight is over quickly. One good thing about being a little farther away is that the wind no longer blows dandruff into Marinette's face, so her nose stops running when Chat's fighting. The minute Chat gets a little closer, though, the sneezes start up again, and she goes through tissues like they're going out of fashion (which they definitely are, according to Vogue's latest issue).

"Didn't see this snowstorm when I was fighting that akuma," Chat says somewhere above her. "Are you sure you're fine?"

" 'm sure," she snuffles out.

"I think that's a no." Chat peers over her shoulder, where he appears to be counting the tissues next to her. "Come on, I'll carry you to where you need to go; we wouldn't want our Ladybug to become a pancake just because she sneezed and fell from the rooftop."

He holds out an arm gallantly and crouches down for Marinette to hop onto his back. From experience, she knows that arguing against him when he's made up his mind is an exercise in futility, so she sighs and crawls up gingerly. Chat drops her off at the park near her house.

* * *

The things is, she really likes Adrien. And then she also likes Chat. And while it's alright to have multiple crushes, it's really not as feasible to pursue both of them.

Marinette knows better than to think that she can keep a romantic relationship alive with Chat right now. They're both stressed and exhausted from the akuma attacks, and they're still getting to know each other. Throwing dates and emotions into that equation simply isn't going to turn out well, and then where would her partner be? One of them would back out when the drama got too big to deal with, and while they'd still work together out of necessity, it's not the same as being friends because they want to. She values their camaraderie too much to risk initiating anything more.

Besides, Adrien knows her as a normal girl. She – she can be normal, she can tell him that she's awfully allergic to cats, she can tell him about her embarrassing love for Early Grey milk tea warmed exactly seventeen seconds in the microwave, her fondness for pho with too much Sriracha added to be healthy, her stuffed Dory sitting on her bed.

Besides, they're both college sophomores, and it's not like they're looking for their One True Love; it'll be alright if it doesn't work out. She hopes it does, though.

* * *

The next time they meet, it's because of a frantic distress call on their cell phones (throw-away, pay-per-call ones they purchased for communication). The signals are jammed, though, and it's not until Marinette's smartphone blows up with bomb alerts and terrorist threats that she realizes a new akuma is on the loose.

This one is particularly tech-savvy, and with the breathing mask covering the akuma's face, the digital pixie is not sneezing its way to defeat. It would've been an ordinary fight, if it weren't for Chat's sudden cold. Marinette, on the other hand, hasn't sneezed once in the fight, even though she's been close enough to Chat that her nose should be flooding.

When she looks over at her partner, he's miserable. Incapacitated by the force of his sneezing, which Marinette suspects may be the cause of the akuma's powers, Chat slumps on the ground. His tail and ears twitch every time he sneezes, which is such a cute sight Marinette absolutely stops to savor it for a bit before throwing herself back into the fight. She sort of feels an urge to run her hand over his hair and kiss him on the cheek, but that's not new; it's been popping up for a couple of months lately and she's gotten used to squashing it down. She has to remind herself why it wouldn't work every time.

Chat sneezes again, and this time, the akuma cackles. "You're never going to defeat me. How does it feel to have a taste of your own medicine, Chat?"

The digitalized pixie dodges one of the Marinette's yo-yo swings. He bobs in the air, triumph smugly cradled in his face. "You're absolutely useless, Ladybug," he yells. "Stupid, stupid girl who's allergic to her partner. Your partner's incapacitated with a digital virus and suddenly you can't even fight. You're a joke," he spits out.

She attempts to keep her eyebrows from rising in surprise from his throwaway comment about her alleriges, but to no avail. "Hah! I was right, wasn't I?" His high-pitched giggling ground away the last of her nerves and the vestiges of his caution. With a quick wrist snap, she snags the akuma in the air and snaps its jeweled necklace in half. Done.

Chat's sneezes stop immediately, and Marinette's start up. She'd forgotten to take her Allegra on the way here because she wasn't sneezing, which really shouldn't have been an excuse, but hey. She's had a long day.

"Hey," she waves at Chat behind a wad of tissues. "Are you feeling better?"

"Much." He steps towards her, and then back again. "Was it true? What he said?"

"Not a lot of it." She sneezes again and catches the tissue pack he tosses at her. "Okay, so maybe some of it."

"Allergies are usually all or nothing," he says. "A good friend told me that."

"Well, you can tell your good friend that this girl's allergies go half way," she retorts in a nasal voice. There's a ringing sensation in her ears.

"I think, considering that you're the one and the same, it's a bit hard to tell them that when they've already told themselves just now."

"Mine are definitely a on and off thing. Allergies have got a bit of a temper, you know," she grits out before a fresh wave of mucus runs down and out of her nose. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Chat sighs. "Let's get you out of here. Follow me; I know a place where we'll be safe."

"Safe for what?"

"I think we need to talk. Our transformations will last for a while yet. Let's go."

"What, are you breaking up with me? I swear those are the words people use right before they leave one another," she jokes.

"Not at all. Come one, we've gotta go. The paparazzi are here."

Sure enough, the swarm of cameras and cars were pulling up outside the hotel building. She could hear the faint cries of their names, persistent and unending.

"Lead the way. Let's go."

He hops, jumps, and skips to an old bridge on the Seine, ducking under the overhang on the little dirt island covered by a hanging wall of ivy. "No one comes here," he says. "After they built all of the new ones, this is one of old stone bridges that were abandoned."

Marinette's sneezing had stopped on the way, but started up again in close proximity. Her nose feels dry and itchy in a way that tells her it's gone red and blotchy, and her eyes begin to well up with tears. She sighs. "Allergies, sorry."

"I think that's the first time you've willingly admitted you're allergic to something," Chat muses. "Usually you just say that you've got a bad cold."

"I do," she tells him. "About one-tenth of the time."

"You tell me about everything else," he scowls in frustration. "I even know your favorite brand of hand sanitizer and your crippling desire for a chocolate Labrador puppy. Why not what you're allergic to? It incapacitates you in fights, and I just want to help."

She winces. "I just – I just didn't want to make you feel too bad," she offers. "I'm allergic to cat dandruff, and from personal experience, I knew that sometimes Miraculous holders can take on characteristics of their animal spirit."

"So you're allergic to my hair," he states dryly.

"Pretty much. And my allergies are pretty manageable, most of the time," she offers. "So there's really no use in saying anything."

He snorts. "There's only no use if your allergies are mild. I see you with a stack of tissues and hand sanitizer whenever you forget to take your medicine. Did you know that I've bought so many Ladybug and Chat Noir themed tissue packs that I get monthly discounts?"

"Why would you buy those? You're clearly fine; I've never even seen you catch a cold." She gestures at his flawless skin. "In fact, I don't think you've ever had a congested _nose._ "

"I may not be sneezing, but I know my friends are. And those poor akumas always need tissues at the end of the fight, so who am I not provide them some?"

"Still. You don't need to buy so many," she presses. "Are they just cheaper in bulk?"

"Well, there's this girl in my class who's 'had a cold' and allergies every other day of the week. And then there's the girl who I fight akumas with, the akumas who sneeze all the time, and my dad. So, yeah, I would say that I need them. Besides, the ones with the cheesy puns on them are hilarious, especially when they've got Ladybug and Chat Noir on them."

Marinette suddenly remembers the tissue packs Adrien has been handing her lately. One of those pun-filled, superhero adorned packages of Kleenex lies in her bag right now. "You've got to be kidding me," she groans.

"Not quite." His smile is a bit self-deprecating. "You wouldn't mind if I de-transformed, would I?"

"Go ahead, Adrien," she mutters, and releases the transformation herself.

There's a little black kwami swirling around Adrien's head. "You know, if you just wanted to remove some of those animal characteristics, all you had to was ask," he informs her archly. He floats closer to her; the air currents tickle her nose. "Your boy's got it bad, but really, only the person affected can actually do something about it."

"I'd really like it if you'd ask Plagg to stop giving me cat dandruff," Adrien interjects. "My dad sneezes too much for anyone's comfort."

"You're sure you don't mind?" Marinette asks Adrien.

"Cat dandruff does nothing for me anyways. And I'd really like it if the people around me don't try to send themselves to the hospital every time I get close."

Marinette pinches the bridge of her nose in an attempt to stave off an incoming sneeze. "Plagg, if you mind?"

"Mademoiselle, I thought you'd never ask." In a swish of air, that odd tickling feeling at the back of her throat disappears. Her sneezes taper off in intensity and the tears from her eyes stop running.

"Thank you," she tells him. Plagg nods, oddly formal, and speeds away with Tikki to do god knows what. She knows Tikki'll come back when she taps the earrings twice.

Marinette turns to Adrien, a fresh epiphany sitting in her mind. "You totally figured I was Ladybug through my allergies, didn't you?"

He hold both hands up in a mock surrender. "It's pretty hard to miss the pattern when they're connected to people you like. And when both of your crushes turn out to be the same person? That just about blew my mind."

"I see," she says faintly. It's just about blowing her brain into little bits and pieces. She needs some time to process later, but she'd say that she's pretty alright with it right now. She doesn't think she can even have a successful relationship by faking normality, anyways.

He leans forward, touches her hair, jerks back. "Are you alright? I'm so sorry, we haven't discussed boundaries but even I know I shouldn't do that –"

"Adrien," she says seriously, leveling at him her best disapproving expression before cracking into a smile, "give me a minute, my brain's still catching up."

He moves to bring his hand away, so she leans into his shoulder instead, tugging his hand around her waist.

The faint sheen of panic has faded from his eyes when she looks up at him. "It might take a couple of days. God knows I only stopped freaking about it when there was an akuma attack."

"Guess you'll have to chauffeur me around until the shock wears off, then. You know how clumsy I am. " She can feel his laughter vibrate in his chest.

He grins, happy and puppy-ish in a way she hasn't seen for a while. "It'd be my pleasure, my lady."

She feels her face soften into a hopeful smile. "Can I get a piggyback ride?"

"Anytime," he promises.

She can live with that.

* * *

Marinette and Adrien put the tissue packs to good use. They've got to relieve those poor akumas of their allergies, after all. Besides, there are new ones with the most hilarious puns. Who are they to deprive the world of Adrien's delightful wordplay?

* * *

A/N: Come freak out with me about entering college. Or, if you're there, please give me some sorely needed advice. I will thank you for the rest of my life. I have absolutely no idea what to do, except for those ill-advised decisions portrayed in movies that I'm pretty sure are guides for what not to do. So. Please. Help. I can offer expertly fried eggs over easy (with or without Sriracha), devil's food chocolate cakes (and cupcakes and mini cupcakes), and did I mention my lifelong thanks?

Also, would it be too much to ask for concrit as well?

Anyways. Thank you, as always, for reading.


End file.
